A new assessment, forty actions, one spreadsheet
Your fire risk assessor visits a block and sends a report. It has a risk rating and a list of actions: fire door closers to adjust, compartmentation breaches in a riser, signage missing, a store cupboard to clear, a policy to review. Each has a priority. Your building safety team copies each action into a master spreadsheet, emails the repairs team for the works, and chases the housing officer about the cupboard.
Months later, the spreadsheet shows many actions as open. Some are done but nobody updated the sheet. Some are done but there is no evidence. Some are genuinely overdue. The next assessment arrives before anyone can tell which is which.
Why FRA actions get lost
Actions touch several teams, from repairs and planned works to housing management and specialist contractors. The assessment is a document, not a system, so actions have to be transcribed and tracked by hand, and completion depends on a job in another system being linked back.
- Actions are copied from PDF reports into spreadsheets by hand.
- Works are raised in the repairs system with no link back to the action.
- Completion evidence, such as photos and certificates, is in email.
- Priorities and due dates are applied inconsistently.
- Open actions by block are hard to report to the board.
What an unmanaged action list costs
The obvious risk is that fire safety work identified by an assessor is not done, which is exactly what your building safety arrangements exist to prevent. Beyond that, staff time goes on reconciling spreadsheets, duplicate works are ordered for actions already done, and reporting to the board and to residents is harder to stand behind.
The FRA action tracking we build
- Each fire risk assessment is uploaded, and its actions are extracted with the block, location, description, priority and assessor's recommendation. A person checks the extraction before it is used.
- Actions are assigned owners and due dates based on priority and type, following your building safety policy.
- Where works are needed, a job is raised in your repairs system from the action and linked back, so completion updates the action.
- Owners record completion with evidence: photos, certificates or notes. Actions without evidence stay open.
- Overdue actions are escalated to managers, and high-priority actions are shown to the accountable person straight away.
- Each block shows its open actions, assessment date and next assessment due, and reports are produced for the board and building safety committee.
- When the next assessment arrives, open actions from the previous one are shown alongside the new ones.
| Action type | Owner | Closed by |
|---|---|---|
| Fire door repair | Repairs team | Job completed with photo |
| Compartmentation works | Specialist contractor | Completion certificate |
| Clear communal storage | Housing officer | Photo of cleared area |
| Signage | Repairs team | Photo |
| Policy or procedure | Building safety team | Document updated |
Your fire risk assessments, assessors and building safety arrangements stay as they are. We track the actions; we do not give fire safety advice or promise compliance.
What the building safety team gets
Every action has an owner, a due date and a status backed by evidence. The spreadsheet disappears. Managers see overdue actions as they become overdue. Board reports show open actions by block and priority from live data. And the next assessor can be given the history of actions from the last one.
Is your FRA action list like this?
- FRA actions are tracked in a spreadsheet.
- Works are raised without a link back to the action.
- Evidence of completion is scattered.
- You are unsure which open actions are genuinely outstanding.
- Board reports on FRA actions are built by hand.